Bad Decisions in your Business – How to Avoid and Recover – Small Business Show 197
14 Nov 2018 · 38 min
This is a podcast episode titled "Bad Decisions in your Business – How to Avoid and Recover – Small Business Show 197," recorded on November 14, 2018. The episode features two hosts, Dave and Shannon Jean, discussing common bad decisions made in small businesses, how to avoid them, and strategies for recovery. They share personal anecdotes, sponsor promotions, and practical advice for entrepreneurs on decision-making, risk management, and maintaining confidence. The content is a structured dialogue between the two hosts focused on small business experiences and lessons learned.
The Small business show episode 197 for Wednesday, November 14, 2018. Greetings folks and welcome to the Small Business show. The show that is BFA small business. You know how it all works. By, for and about. That's what BFA means. Sponsors for this episode include textexpander and Hopsy. We will talk more about both of those shortly. Here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave.
Hamilton and out on the west coast, I am Shannon Jean. How are you, Dave?
I'm doing well, Shannon. It's crazy. It's Q4, so, you know, we're in the, we're in the consumer focused business. So it's, I mean it's, it's been a great Q4. It. Things are looking really good, but it's just, man, flat out. Yep.
Yeah, you gotta hustle, you know, make. This is a big, big time of the year. So it's fantastic.
It's fun hustling though. It's, it's different for this year, you know, because I, I'm doing more of the hands on work. Right. But it's been so good, like good in every way. Yeah. Just getting my, you know, getting back involved, doing some of those things. I don't want to say that they've been on autopilot, but they've been. Somebody else has been shepherding them for a while.
That makes it. Yeah, yeah, makes sense. So it's always a thing.
I went, met with some ad agencies last week while I was in Los Angeles for the Mac Tech conference and that was really good to do. And. Oh yeah, it's. I'm having a blast, actually.
That's great.
Yeah.
And you know, we're, we're coming up on our 200th episode in a few weeks, which is awesome. You know, it's. I can't believe we've made it this far. I'm really happy. We'll, you know, we'll get something going on for that episode. I'm not sure what it is yet, but we will figure it out. Yeah, we'll figure something out. And you know what a great decision it was when I made the call and said, hey, Dave, we need to do a podcast about our small business experience. It'll be a lot of fun and it certainly has been a great ride and I'm looking forward.
Yeah, thank you for that. You know, this is our, our penultimate episode before Thanksgiving of 2018. The next episode will be a little bit different and we'll leave that as a surprise for you folks listening. But because of that, I want to take the opportunity and say thank you now. So thank you for creating the idea for this show and pitching it to me. And it's been great. I'm loving it.
Yeah. I am very thankful that I get to come each week and talk about this and the great feedback we get from our subscribers and working with you, our listeners, is fantastic. It was a great decision to start this. It's been extremely rewarding. But since I'm so good at also making bad decisions, I thought this episode this week, we could talk about that in a few moments and see where that goes.
Yeah. So before we talk about bad decisions, I want to talk about a really good decision. And that is our first sponsor, which is textexpander. And man, if you are using textexpander already, you have made a good decision. If you aren't good news, you have a good decision on your plate already. I just put it there for you. So what you're going to do is you're going to go to textexpander.com podcast that saves you 20% off of your first year of this super productivity tool. I can't even begin to tell you how important this tool is for your business, for your personal life. It runs on your. If you have it on your. On your desktop computer, it runs as an app. And for whatever reason, the other day I had quit it on my laptop while I was traveling. I realized that within about 19 seconds after quitting it. And it's because I rely on it so much. I have so many things that I type repeatedly that I don't want to get wrong. Simple things like my company name or my email address or my phone number. And also then long snippets of text that are important for email replies and just keeping things moving. And so I use it constantly while I'm typing and doing stuff. And when it wasn't running, I knew immediately I, you know, I, I quit a bunch of apps cause my laptop was being slow. It wasn't textexpander that was making it slow. It was, you know, like Safari or something. But, you know, I just quit everything and then went back into my email and was like, oh, nope, nope, wrong one, Dave. So I brought textexpander back up. Suddenly I had all my snippets and everything there. Life was good again. You gotta check this out for your business. Because the cool thing is once you create all those snippets, you can sync them with all the other people in your organization so that everybody has the snippets you want them to have customer service responses, automatic formatting of things. It's fantastic. So check it out. Go to textexpander.com podcast. That's where you're going to get 20% off your first year. You're going to love it. I promise you. Textexpander.com podcast Our thanks to the folks at Smile and Textexpander for making Textexpander and also for sponsoring this episode. All right, Shannon.
All right. Yeah, we could do a whole episode on textexpander.
It's actually not a bad idea.
Yeah. And if you don't use it, you really owe it to yourself to take a look at it, because you can just build an entire system of communication around it. It's phenomenal. Okay. Yeah. So let's talk about some bad decisions. I was thinking about this the other day, and I thought we need talk about it because making bad decisions, they can really have a devastating impact on your small business, whether you make them or your. Your employees, you know, your partner, that kind of stuff. And they can all. They can have the same kind of negative impact on your personal life. So what I'd like to talk about is how to avoid making them in the first place. And then, you know, when we inevitably make some, how do. How do we recover quickly and, and move on. And, you know, I really struggle with this because I'm a huge proponent of making decisions quickly or just making decisions.
Right.
Because so many people tend to get paralyzed when it comes to making a decision. And if you're a decision maker, man, you can just leapfrog whether it's a person, a competitor. I talk to my kids about this all the time. Like, hey, you know, be a decision maker and deal with the consequences. But at the same time, you know, where those quick decision making skills can really help your small business if, you know, if you, if you make bad ones, they can hurt you. And so we're going to talk about a few of those. And I want to be really clear. I've pretty much made all of these mistakes that we're going to be discussed. You know, it's my learn by doing philosophy. And the first one is, you know, not having all the decision that you need to. I'm sorry, all the information that you need to make that decision. Even if you're going to make a quick decision, there's got to be some minimum, a required information that you need. Maybe not everything. And maybe you're good at making decisions with just a little bit of info. It's like name that tune. Right? You Hear a couple of notes and oh, I know that song. But enough to minimize your risk. And I'll give you a good example. I've been in the product purchasing business forever buying, you know, large quantities of stuff and often that stuff. Ideally there's a list and you would think, oh, well, I'm going to buy this stuff. And there's a list, you know, referred to as a manifest and that on that list you'll see a list, you know, listings of what products are included and if you're really lucky, what condition they're in, all this kind of stuff. Those are fantastic because you can make an educated decision. However, so can everybody else.
Right.
So there's more competition that way. But there's also lots of product out there that is available, that is unmanifested, meaning it's a giant truck that they shoved full of stuff and nobody has counted it, nobody has cataloged it. And there are. Yeah. And there are opportunities there. It's kind of like the, the mystery box.
Yeah, yeah. What's behind door number two? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And on a limited basis, sometimes you can do really well with that stuff if you know your vendor. Again, it's just more information. So if you know that, oh, I'm getting all this stuff from Best Buy, let's say, and I know that person and I've bought from them before, well, that's one thing versus many years ago. For some dumb reason, I made a bad decision and wanted to get in the TV business and decided that we could work on these TVs or just like big laptops. It was just when flat panels were really coming out and hitting the market and I was buying, trying to make new relationships and bought an unmanifested truckload of these TVs. And it was a horrific, horrific mistake. And it was just junk and I really had no recourse. So it really stuck with me. I've never bought another unmanifested load like this ever again because I got burned so bad financially and just, you know, my confidence level is starting a new venture and Gunther. But you need to have some kind of minimum amount of information. And if you're, if it's a, like in this case where I was buying something, it was a brand new vendor, there was no trust established. You know, I had no track record to know that, oh, this guy's not going to, you know, this person is not going to burn me because they want to keep my, my, my business. Right. And I never went back and bought from this company again. I was we never did any business and it was just kind of go pound sand when I tried to complain and, and that was it. So, yeah, that happened.
So, yeah, there's. Well, there's a. You mentioned confidence there. You will make mistakes. You know, we talk about them all the time. They're our favorite things here on the Small Business show. And some of those mistakes are the result of your bad decisions. Right. And yet getting, Regaining your confidence. I feel like there's a whole other episode there, but, but really it's a good one. You need to stop, like, you need to realize what you've done, you know, process the bad decision, grieve it for a short period of time in a way that's at least helpful. But then you need to kind of put that aside and once you've, once you've sort of siphoned the lessons out of it, you know, and you need to sit back and you do need to pat yourself on the back for a little bit about all the good decisions you've made and remind yourself that, yep, yep, okay, I can do good things, no problem. I made a. I made a bad error. Might have been a terrible error. It might seem. It certainly seems worse today than it will tomorrow and even the next day. And the next day, you know, it's just going to get better. But remind yourself that, okay, I did this. I'm now a better manager decision maker for it because I did the stupid thing. And now I've learned. So I don't need to be paralyzed like you said, and caught in this rut of not moving forward. I've seen, I've experienced. I don't even need to talk about the people I've seen. I've done it to myself where I've made a bad decision. And then you just get, I mean, that's it. You're like, oh, well, let's just only do the things we've proven we know how to do. If all you're doing in your business is the things that have made you money yesterday, you're not gonna make money tomorrow. Like, that's just how it goes. So you gotta keep moving. Yeah, right.
And I believe that the difference between small business owners, entrepreneurs is that we are able to get over those bad decisions because there's. We've talked, we talked about this before on a recent show about, you know, it's up to you what story you tell in your life.
Yes, yes.
And so if you stop after you made that bad, this bad decision, and that's the only thing you're Ever going to do. Well, that'll be your story.
That's your story.
I tried to start a business and I got burned and that's it. Now I'm going to go back to work. Whatever. You know, I kept moving. Now that didn't mean I didn't continue to lose money and eventually just get killed in the TV business, which I did.
Yeah.
But I eventually, after about a year I ran as far as I could from it. But I had a great time and I have a fantastic TV in my kids game room and anytime anybody comes to my house I say, you know, that's the most expensive TV on the planet right there. Because I, and it's kind of like, you know, Dave, you talk about a lot the, it's the theory of sunk costs or the law. Yeah. It's not getting so tied up and it's like, well how am I ever going to get the money? I'm never going to get that money back. You know that there's a, there's a hundred thousand dollar television that's like a, you know, not very special sitting in my kids game.
Special to one person. That's right.
Yeah, I remember. But I, but I, and I tell that story all the time because you may know this from listening to the show. I like to talk and I talk about stuff all the time and people probably get tired of hearing about how this worked great and I did this and this listen to this crazy story. So I often want to share where I screwed up. I'm a, look, you know, look at this. Let me show you this TV that you know, cost me 100 grand or whatever because I made this huge mistake. And you know, so I think if you can, if you can wrap that lesson around it, you know, it could be useful for you.
So I it with, with bad decisions I am reminded of, you know, you can make bad decisions where you buy something that's, that's, you know, obviously not something you, you can sell and you don't know that at the time. And it winds up being bad. We had, you know, we at Backbeat Media we work with publishers and the way we work is we do a revenue share with the publishers and then we negotiate that and then in comes, you know, then it's our job to go and create the revenue and then we give the publisher the split that we previously agreed upon and you know, that's, that's how it works. Well, I had this one publisher I wanted to bring on board. We were talking with him. It seemed like a really good fit and they wanted a rev share that was higher than we had offered anyone else. And I thought, well, it's, you know, this is a good publisher. This was years and years ago. Like, yeah, this is a good publisher. We should do this. So I took the deal and, you know, it took me about two and a half years to. Because we, they weren't the only publisher we were working with. Right. It took me about two and a half years to realize we were actually losing money on every deal we sold for them. Yeah. But, you know, in, in aggregate, it was like, well, you know, it's more money on the table. That's a good thing. Our gross revenues are up, like, all of those. I could easily point to ways where, no, this is good for us, but it wasn't even a break even. We were just losing money. So I, I mean, thankfully I realized it. And by losing money, I mean the time that our sales reps were spending doing this, the time that we were spending internally sort of managing the, you know, the relationship and the campaign, there was just no money left over. Just the way it all worked, it was like, yeah, there's nothing. And, and I, so I finally, you know, so I guess it took about two years to realize that. It took another six months for me to accept it. And then at that point, I had a meeting with them and said, look, we're going to have to terminate the contract. And they said, oh, my gosh. I said, well, we made a mistake, you know, and here's why. And I was very upfront with them because we had a good relationship. We'd been working together for, you know, over two years. And they understood it. They were like, oh, well, I'm glad you told us. You know, where does that, where does that split need to be? And I'm like, oh, I'm glad you asked. You know, now I know. And the best part is we still work with that publisher.
Oh, that's sweet.
Right?
That's really good.
And the, and even more valuable than that, though, is when, now when I talk with new publishers and they say, oh, no, I want a rev share of that, I can confidently walk away and say, no, you know what? We know how our business works. A rev share above X simply doesn't work for us. So that's where we set them all. That's where we are with this. If it doesn't work for you, you know, go somewhere else. They'll give you, you know, another 10 points or whatever above what we do. We do a different thing here. If what we do is right for you, then this is what it costs. If what those people do is right for you, then that's what it costs. And that's hey, yeah, like that's all good. But it lets me walk away from those other deals clear headed. It doesn't keep me up at night like it used to be. Like, oh, we lost this publisher to so and so. If we lose them because of the rev split, I'm totally fine with it. Totally. Yep.
Yeah. And that's, you know, being able to walk away is really powerful and it leads me kind of darn my next thing is I'll time, you know, you just like some minimum amount of information before you make that decision. You need some minimum amount of time. And a lot of bad decisions are made when time is constrained. Especially I always would joke, you know, it's a young small business owners may or problem. Especially if you're like for me when I was younger and deals would come along and I would go, this deal's never coming again. Or they would tell me, you only have, you know, till the end of the day today to buy this.
Right.
You know, limited time only.
Right.
Those are the deals you need to walk away from because you don't want to let someone else unless you know that you have all the information for you go, that's a smoking deal, I'm going to buy it. But if someone else is trying to control the narrative and the timing of the thing, if they're trying to pressure you, man, that the first thing you want to do is go, hey, I'll review the deal and if I can get back to you or I'll review this decision whether it's, you know, you're signing a lease on a building and they always say, oh, I've got five more people looking at it and this and you got to decide, well that, that's. They're always trying to pressure you to do that kind of stuff. Take your own time. If it wasn't meant to be, it's not meant to be. Don't get pushed in the, the limited time only fallacy.
Yeah, no, it is a fallacy and it's a business model for a lot of businesses. You got to create that sense of urgency, right. And whatever it is, and I mean we all do it, it's fine, we do and sometimes it's legit, you know, and you just got to learn to suss that out and if it's not, then that's that. However, the corollary to that, my friend, is you can convince yourself that there are more questions to ask, more information. You need to make a decision solely as a reason to push off making that decision. And I've learned, perhaps because we're in this, I guess everybody's in the sales business at some point, right? Cause you gotta start something to customers. But you know, I notice when I've got somebody that, you know, that comes around and they are asking questions, like initially, they need information, no problem, give them the information, answer questions. Then when it's obvious that, you know what they're doing is just asking questions so that they can avoid saying yes or no. Oh yeah, that, you know, that's when it's like, okay, cool, just let me know. The fourth, what we do at that point is say, oh yeah, let me know whatever it is, the three things, the one thing that, that's keeping you from doing this. And then we take those things off the table and say, okay, are we good to go? I also do that to myself if I'm in a negotiation for something that I don't necessarily need, but might be a thing if I find myself asking more questions. I've, I've now gotten to the point where I just notice it probably because we do it with our clients and it's like, okay, nope, you can't do this. You can't. You know, I could justify waiting a month to make this decision because, oh, I, I don't have all the information. Well, you're never going to have all the information. You just got to make a decision. And sometimes that decision is no. Like, I'll use that if I catch myself doing that. Like the cycle of questions. Sometimes it's like, hey, you know what? I'm telling myself I'm not actually interested in this and I just walk away. But I say no and walk away.
Yeah, yeah. And I think that's a really good point to be made on all these things. I'm a fast decision maker. So when I look at my list, these are all things that kind of slow me down a bit, which I need. But if you're kind of a more methodical, slower decision maker, don't let these things paralyze, you know, that, oh, I need information, I need to do this, I need that. But don't let it stop you from making that decision. You've got, you know, you got to keep moving forward always. And you know, we talked about, you know, a number of other things, but one of them also, as I always wanted to point out, is making decisions based on out of date information, you know, historical data, doesn't always prove that things are going to work the same way. So make sure. And I have to bring it back to what I'm really experienced with is buying products. And I would look, oh, well, you know, six months ago we paid X for that. So should we be able to pay X again? And the answer is, you know, certainly could be yes, but equally could be, well, no, it's worth less money. Or in some cases it could be worth more money because they're hard to get. So you may not get the deal if you go in and say, well, I'll pay you X. And they say, oh, I've got somebody else willing to pay more. Because this product part, whatever it is, is constrained and you can't get it anymore. So make sure your data that you're working with is up to date.
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Let me grab now that we know. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That was a great decision, getting them on board. One of the things I like to talk about is making your decisions based on emotion versus facts. You know, what's driving the decision is your ego involved. Are you trying to beat out to the next guy and get the deal? Are you lowering your price so much because you're fighting and you really, you know, you're wrapped up in making sure you make the sale? Be sure to step back and know that, like, to your point, Dave, I know we can take, you know, a revenue share deal up to this percentage and beyond that, it's not worth it. And so stick to your guns. If you're buying products like I typically have done, I know that I can pay up to X. Don't get wrapped up in an auction or some kind of deal where they're trying to push you through on a limited time and, and you know, go above what your ceiling is for your price. So don't let your emotions take over.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah. Another one that I'm. This one has got to be the number one for me because I'm, I'm, you know, I'm such an optimist about everything and always it really carries me through my life much, you know, versus the alternative. But if you can, if you find yourself relying on too many best case scenarios and, and this is a big one for me, that's kind of what.
I was saying with the, you know, finding all the questions like it's never going to be best.
Yeah, yeah, it's never going to be. You're never going to make the kind. You know, when I build a spreadsheet and I do this best kit, I just know, you know, you're not going to make all that money. So you got to look at it. You know, I'm always looking at the upside and I'm always better when I have a partner or an employee or my spouse, you know, my wife explaining, hey, if it goes sideways, what's the downside? You know, so I often look at, okay, well, how do we get out of a deal and not lose any money? Can we just get our money back? Versus, you know, getting burned like in the TV business that I was so excited about and I realized I was using my emotion because I wanted this big TV at the time, you know, so make sure you're overly optimistic, which we promote here on the show. We talk about creating your own reality. That's really important. But you also have to ground yourself when you're looking at these, these decisions. It's important. Yeah, for sure. I got a few more.
Okay.
The next one for me is complacency. Thinking about, oh, this has always worked. Getting in a rut of, you know, oh, this situation. When A happens, we do B, and this is how we make our money and that's it. And so you gotta be ready for new situations to come up. You gotta adjust your decisions based on them. Markets change, your employees change, your competitors change. And you can guarantee that someone's looking at your business, especially if it, if it appears that there's a hefty amount of profit there, even if you know there's not, someone else thinks, boy, I can get into that business. This guy's not, not. They're not doing this. They're behind the times. There's some new piece of technology I could introduce, some new way to do the service. I mean, who's really great at this? Amazon, you know, looking at a way to eat up somebody's profits and create a whole new market for themselves. Don't get complacent, you know, because I guarantee you, when you think everything's going smooth and you've got channels of revenue going and going and going, things will change, things will be ready.
That's right. Yeah.
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Another one for me is not thinking about. You've talked about it a lot, Dave. The law of unintended consequences. Right. Or opportunity costs. You know, how will this decision impact your cash flow, your time, your staffing requirements, your building, shipping, all. There's a lot of things involved and you need to be able to process through those and do it it as quick as you can. But you got to think about what consequences are because you don't want to make a big decision and all of a sudden surprise everybody. And people look at you like what, you know, we don't have enough people or we're coming up on Thanksgiving and there's no way we're going to be able to do this. You know, that kind of stuff. Talk about it. One of the ones I really feel strongly about relying too much on so called experts. I think that that can really lead you to missed opportunities more than anything else. And bad decisions in the sense that you didn't make the decision or you turned something down. Because if you ask your attorney or your banker or your friend who's an Accountant or whatever. Should you take this risk and do these things? Well, nine times out of ten, they're going to say, no, you shouldn't do it because they would never do it. So you got to be confident like we talked about earlier, and use your gut instinct. And if you've, you know, made decisions before and been rewarded by taking that risk, there is. You're not going to get rewarded without taking some kind of risk. If you feel like you've minimized the amount of risk that's out there, you're not going to get too much trouble. You're not going to own $100,000 television. You know, go for it. You know, do it.
You know, let me point this out. I mean, you said you're not going to own $100,000 television, but you've survived that. So that's an impulse. But that's an important lesson, like it's okay to own $100,000 television.
You're right.
It's not the decision you want to make. If you, if you could peer into the future, you would not have made that decision, but you did, and it didn't work out. And yes, you have a television that's stupidly worth a hundred grand, you know, almost 100 times what it's probably worth, you know, and, and that's okay, right? It, it, it, like it didn't crater you, you were in a position to make that decision at the time in a, in a way that it wasn't going to, you know, completely destroy you if it went, went sideways. And it did go sideways. And I think that's the thing you said, you know, accept some amount of risk. That's where the profits are. You have to, you have to be willing to take some amount of risk. And, you know, these things are not. I, I don't believe that the future is predetermined for us, right? So if you take some amount of risk and, and it doesn't work out, like, if you're willing to be creative in that moment, that's where you can. That's where the profit really is, Right? It's not in the risk, it's in, what do you do when things go sideways. That's where you actually make money. I think that's what. Yeah, let me state this another way. That's where I make money, because I'm not smart enough to always make the right decision. In fact, I'm never am, but it's like, oh, here I am. I'm a pretty good improvisationalist, and I trust myself to land Somehow on my feet, it might not be the softest landing all the time. Sure. But I know that, okay, I know how to make money. And that's actually a good thing to remind yourself. If all hell breaks loose, your business completely craters. What would you do tomorrow in order to figure out how to pay your mortgage beyond wherever your savings kits? You're answer that question and then the rest gets really easy. It gets really easy.
Yep, I would agree. And, and I think that that acceptable risk. So you know where I say, oh, I, I just lost 100 grand on this, you know, these crazy TVs. I knew that that was okay. Right, okay, well, I can deal with that. But it also, you know, it kind of forces you to hustle again because now you're like, okay, how do I make this up? You know, you either have you got to get that cash back or you got to pay down a credit line that you borrowed from whatever it is now it for. And you know, either hopefully make another decision that's much better than that one, you know, to grow and do something that's going to generate that money and pay that, pay that money back. I mean, you have to be resourceful. It's really important. And then I want to, you know, I want to wrap things up with a comment about something that our guy Scott Adams talks about a lot. You know, we refer to him because he's got some great persuasion techniques and we apply them to business here. And that's confirmation bias. And what I mean by that, it's I'm right thinking that, oh, I'm right because I believe I am and thinking that this is a good decision because I know it's good. And you know, you have to have some checks and balance in. And I think it comes with experience, you know, if you be able to bounce things off people. What do you think of this? You know, people that you know are going to give you a good objective feedback. Not somebody who doesn't make decisions like this, but maybe a peer. Maybe you've got a small business group, maybe you've got a score mentor. Maybe you want to send an email to the guys on the small business show at feedbackusinessshow Co. Or go post it in the small business forum at BusinessShow Co Facebook and get some feedback by the hundreds of other small business owners that are out there. So, you know, getting that outside stuff is good. You can kind of have a little check on your thought process there. But you gotta ask the right group of people.
You do? Yeah. If you ask the Wrong people, they will tell you it's not gonna work. Whether or not it's gonna work. Right. You gotta find the right people. But you're right to avoid confirmation bias. My favorite example, I love that you brought up that term. My favorite example of that is do you think that your car speakers in, you know, your stereo speakers in your car sound better than your friends? Right? Right. There's no way to object, answer that question. If you believe that yours sound better, you will, and this has been proven, you will actually be happier listening to yours. Like that is a measurable physiological response that happens. If you believe it's better, you are happier. Right?
Mine are better. I have those gold tipped cables and that's what makes them better. Dave.
Yeah, that goes along real well with your $100,000 television, man.
You got it.
Yeah. Well, that's the thing, right? If you think that gold tipped HDMI cables make the signal on your TV look better, you will think that. Now, scientifically that's been proven to be irrelevant because it's a digital signal, it's a one and it's a zero. But it's like, we're not here to have that argument, Right? That's just how it works. So you have to, at the right times and from the right people, get a sanity check. Because you might not be exactly right. That said, there are times to just trust your gut and go. In fact, I would say most of the time, trust your gut most of the time. Only if you're making a decision that could crater you, is it worth, you know, potentially worth checking in with somebody. I think that that, like, that's my litmus test on that. I don't know.
Yeah. And especially if they're just decisions that I'm not involving a ton of money or a ton, a big commitment of time, you know, you're going to make those, see those decisions pop up all the time. My examples were a little different because they're based on my experience. And I always think of one, I, you know, the ones I've messed up on the most when I'm talking about this. That's why we ask our guests about what's their best mistake because it's made such a big, big impact on us. We know that they've learned from that. And so, yeah, you know, look at this stuff. But, you know, definitely said, don't let it paralyze you. Quick decisions will, I think, serve you much better in the long run. And you will outpace the folks that are taking rigorous study and all kinds of time. And that could, you know, I think, you know, get the data you need, do it as quick as you possibly can, and. And make the decision.
Yep. I agree.
Awesome.
I agree.
Good stuff, man. We'd like to hear from you and hear about your bad decisions. Like I said. Feedbackusinessshow.co share your story so we can talk about it and, you know, everybody can learn from it. That's what we're here for.
And, and also, you know, you mentioned, if you want. Shannon, you mentioned this, that if you, our listeners, want a sanity check on something, feel free to send us a note. You know, we. If you say, look, don't read this on the show or if you read it on the show, please, you know, sanitize it so that it doesn't point back to me, totally fine. We are happy to answer those questions. Not only does it help you, it actually helps us to like, you know, being able to evaluate stuff. You always learn more when you're teaching something, so truly. Feedbackusinessshow.co we'd love to hear from you. It'd be. It would be our pleasure and we would be quite thankful for it. So there you go. Yeah. Take it easy, folks. Keep living that charmed life.
Thanks for listening.